Cooking Teaches Lessons
by Elisabeth Harker
Summary: Jo has a German meal and a secret for Fritz.  Yet another story written based on the yuletide2010 prompt list.


Notes: After the yuletide fan fiction challenge is finished, all of the prompts are available to be written, as New Year's gifts. I am determined to write **all **of the Little Women prompts. This is for Larian, who wanted Jo's first attempt at cooking German food for Bhaer. It should probably be noted that I don't know anything about German cooking, so please ignore any mistakes in that area!

If any readers would like to know where to find the list of yuletide Little Women prompts (as well as prompts for about a gazillion other fandoms!) let me know, because this writing thing is fun.

*.*.*.*

The smell coming from the oven wasn't exactly what Jo Bhaer had been hoping for, but at least it wasn't the distinctive stench of burning food. Jo had learned, fairly early on in her cooking adventures, how to tell when her meals were on the verge of catching fire. More slowly she was discovering that the creativity which had always served her so well when penning a story or a poem was her downfall in the kitchen. Better to stick with the simple, wholesome food that she and Fritz both liked, and not muddle it too horribly with a handful of this or that, for when inspiration struck her in this situation it was no more helpful than a bolt of lightning.

Unpleasant odors aside, the kitchen was in a state of complete disarray. The sink was filled with potato peels, and a half used bowl of lumpy, yellowish cream stood beside it. Herring scales, bones, and a print of red fish blood upon the recipe which Jo had been using completed the picture.

There was another print upon Jo's stomach, where she'd been in the habit of resting her hand for the last few days, feeling for something that might well not be there, and which she knew she must not mention until she was quite certain. All in all, she didn't know whether to be excited for what was to come, afraid that she was wrong and it wouldn't come to pass after all, or worried about what things would be like when she was large with child and couldn't run about as was used to. It served her right that just as soon as she'd begun to grow more comfortable in the role of a woman and a wife her body would up and prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that she was both of those things, and excessively so.

It was growing dark outside and Fritz would be home soon. He'd only been out a few hours, picking up some books that they had ordered for the new school, and though he'd invited Jo along, she'd been feeling strange and ill all day, and asked to be left behind. If only she'd come, instead of deciding to try her hand at German dishes she could barely pronounce, much less make!

Jo crossed her arms, not about to be beaten by such a little thing as preparing supper. She bent over to retrieve the dish she'd been cooking from the oven, and began to think of what she'd add to it to keep them from both starving to death.

The fried egg sandwiches were completely serviceable. The tomato and spinach salad was pleasant. And the herring stuffed potatoes? Well, the potatoes were hard, the fish only half cooked, and both Jo and Fritz had to chew extremely slowly to avoid being choked by errant bones.

"It's not worth the effort," Jo declared with a laugh after a bite or two, thinking of her first ill-fated dinner party where she'd mistaken salt for sugar, and no one had been able to get through the meal save for Teddy.

They were seated at Aunt March's old dining table, but neither she nor Fritz took the head of the table as they were meant to, preferring to sit comfortably side by side at the center, a pile of math books spread out before them as they tried to choose the best one to teach their future students out of.

"Perhaps," replied Fritz. "We are not, the two of us, suited well in mathematics. We carry on!"

Jo gave him a wry smile, leaning over to look at his open math book, as he took another bite of his meal.

"I meant you continuing to eat those potatoes for me. I know what they taste like, and they're dangerous besides. I won't have you suffocating to spare my feelings."

Fritz looked up at her as if quite surprised.

"You can't mean to say that you _like_ them," said Jo.

"Thou go against your most natural inclination in making them, trying to go instead to mine. This," he said, brandishing his fork, "is hard work. I will eat it."

"I wanted to give you a taste of home," Jo said, taking a bite of her own food, if only to keep her husband from having to suffer alone.

"Thou do. Of the new home."

"This new home tastes of rancid fish and spoilt cream, then."

Fritz's brow creased in a way that Jo had come to know meant he had many things to say, and needed time to think of how to say them, encumbered as he was by this clumsy new language. He took her free hand under the dinner table, as they both finished their meal.

"It tastes," he said finally, "of being with somebody who is young, alive, loves and has… has impulse. And improves. And is fearless."

Carefully, Jo guided his large hand so that it touched her stomach.

"I'm not completely fearless," she admitted. "I'm excited as well, and I _can't_ keep a secret to save my life, so now you know."

"Thou…" And here Fritz broke into the most beautiful smile Jo had ever seen.

"I don't know," she said quickly, worried he would pick her up and spin her about as he looked wont to do, and that it would all be for no reason. "Maybe I'm not, and I don't want to disappoint you if I'm not, but I just wanted you to know that perhaps…"

"Perhaps." Fritz repeated.

Jo nodded.

"We will watch and wait together, then."

Fritz kissed her then, the simple gesture filling Jo with heat and hope, and she knew that she was right not to keep secrets from him.


End file.
